by Nora Roberts
“Yes. Noah.” She laid a hand on his arm. “When I saw you get out of the car just now, I knew I could lean on you. I wanted to.”
“Liv. If I told you I’d take care of you, it’d just piss you off, wouldn’t it?”
She gave a watery laugh and sat back on the bed again. “Yeah, not now because I’m shaky, but later.”
“Well, since you’re shaky, I’ll risk it. I’m going to take care of you.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her. “Believe it. Now call your grandfather.”
He’d taken such a risk. Such a foolish and satisfying risk. How easily he could have been caught.
And then what?
He wasn’t ready to face that yet. Not quite yet. As he sat in his room, he lifted a glass of bourbon to his lips with a hand that still shook slightly.
But not with fear. With excitement. With life.
For twenty years, he’d had no choice but to follow the rules. To do what was expected. To play the game. He couldn’t have known, could never have anticipated what it was like to be free of that.
It was terrifying. It was liberating.
She would know what the rose meant. She wouldn’t have forgotten the symbolism of it.
Daddy’s home.
He drank again, felt such power after so many years of powerlessness.
He’d nearly been caught. What incredible timing. He’d barely left the house by the back door—wasn’t it wonderful that such people trusted the fates and left their doors unlocked—when he’d seen them step out of the trees.
Livvy, little Livvy and the son of the cop. That was irony enough for any script. The cycle, the circle, the whims of fortune that would have the daughter of the woman he loved connect with the son of the cop who’d investigated her murder.
Julie, his beautiful Julie.
He’d thought it would be enough just to frighten Livvy, enough to make her think of that bloody night so many years ago, to remember what she’d seen and run from.
How could he have known, after all these years, that he would look at her as she turned to another man and see Julie? Julie pressing that long, slim body against someone else?
How could he have known he’d remember, in a kind of nightmare frenzy, what it was to destroy what you loved? And need so desperately to do it all again?
And when it was done . . . He picked up the knife and turned it under the lamplight . . . It would be over. The circle finally closed.
There would be nothing left of the woman who’d turned him away.
“You’ll need to take basic precautions.” Frank sat in the MacBride living room, his blood humming. Back on the job, he thought. To finish one that had never felt closed.
“For how long?” Olivia asked. It was her grandmother who concerned her most. But the crisis appeared to have steadied Val. She sat, shoulders straight, eyes alert, mouth hard.
“As long as it takes. You’re going to want to avoid going out alone, staying in groups as much as possible. And start locking the doors.”
Olivia had had time to settle, time to think. So she nodded. “There really isn’t anything we can do, is there?”
He remembered the little girl hiding in the closet, and the way she’d reached out to him. She was a woman now, and this time he couldn’t just pick her up and take her to safety. “I’m going to be as honest with you as I can, Livvy. So far, he hasn’t done anything we can push him on.”
“Stalking,” Noah snapped out. “Trespassing. Breaking and entering.”
“First you have to prove it.” Frank held up a hand. “If we manage to do that, the police might be able to hassle him, but not much more. A phone call with no specific threat, a gift and a flower put into an unlocked house. He could argue that he just wanted to make contact with the daughter he hasn’t seen in twenty years. There’s no law against it.”
“He’s a murderer.” Rob stopped his restless pacing and laid a hand on Olivia’s shoulder.
“Who’s served his time. And the fact is . . .” Frank scanned the faces in the room. “The contact may be all he wants.”
“Then why didn’t he speak to me, over the phone?”
Frank focused on Olivia. She was a little pale, but holding up well. Underneath the composure, he imagined her nerves were screaming. “I can’t get into his head. I never could. Maybe that’s why I could never put this one aside.”
You’re what’s left of Julie, Frank thought. All he has left of her. And you’re what helped put him away. And she knew it. He could see the knowledge of it burning in her eyes.
“What we can do is ask the local police to do some checking,” he continued. “Do what they can to find out if Tanner’s in the area.”
Olivia nodded again, kept her hands still in her lap. “And if he is?”
“They’ll talk to him.” And so will I, Frank thought. “If he contacts you, let me know about it right away. If there’s more, we may be able to push on the stalking.” He hesitated, then got to his feet. “Remember one thing, Livvy. He’s on your ground. Out of his element. And he’s alone. You’re not.”
It bolstered her, as it was meant to. She rose as well. “I’m glad you’re here.” She smiled at Celia. “Both of you.”
“We all are.” Val stepped forward. “I hope you’ll stay for dinner.”
“You have so much on your mind,” Celia began.
“We’d like you to stay.” Val laid a hand on Celia’s arm, and there was a plea in her eye, woman to woman.
“Then why don’t I give you a hand? I haven’t had a chance to tell you how much I like your home.” As they started out, with Celia’s arm draped over Val’s shoulders, Olivia wondered who was leading whom.
“I haven’t even offered you a drink.” Rob struggled to slip into the role of host. “What can I get you?”
Coffee, Frank started to say. He always drank coffee when he was working. But Olivia moved to Rob, slid her arm through his. “We have a really lovely Fumé Blanc. Noah’s fond of good wine. Why don’t you make yourselves comfortable while we open a bottle?”
“That would be nice. Wouldn’t mind stretching my legs a bit first. Noah, why don’t we take a walk?”
He wanted to object, to keep Olivia in sight. But it had been more order than request, and he knew there was a reason for it. “Sure. We’ll take a look at Mr. MacBride’s garden so you can mourn your own failure.” As much for himself as to make a point, he turned to Olivia, brushed a kiss over her mouth. “Be right back.”
Frank waited until they were outside. Even as they stepped off the porch, his eyes were scanning. “I take it there’s more between you and Livvy than the book.”
“I’m in love with her. I’m going to marry her.”
The sudden hitch in his step had Frank coming up short, blowing out a breath. “Next time, son, remember my age and tell me to sit down first.”
Noah was braced for a fight, craved one. “You have a problem with that?”
“No, anything but.” Calmly, Frank studied his son’s face. “But it sounds like you do.”
“I brought this on her.”
“No. No, you didn’t.” Deliberately he moved away from the house, wanting to be certain their voices didn’t carry through open windows. “If Tanner wanted to get to her, he’d have found a way. You didn’t lead him here, Noah.”
“The fucking book.”
“Maybe he looked at it as a tool, maybe he just wanted the spotlight again.” Frank shook his head. “Or maybe he started out wanting to tell his story, just as he told you. I’ve never been able to get a handle on him. I’ll tell you this, if you don’t keep your head clear, you never will either. And you won’t help her.”
“My head’s clear.” And his rage was cold. “Clear enough to know if I find him before the cops do, I’ll do more than talk. He’s terrorizing her, and he brought Mom into it. He’s used me for part of it.”
He strode around the edge of the garden, where the last soft light lay like silk over the celebration of flowers.
“Goddamn it. I sat with him. I looked him in the eye. I listened to him. I’m supposed to know what’s inside people, when they’re stringing me along. And I’d started to believe he’d been innocent.”
“So had I at one point. Why did you?”
Noah jammed his hands into his pockets, stared into the trees. “He loved her. However fucked-up he was, he loved her. He still does. You can see it when he talks about her. She was it for him. I know what that feels like now. When you have that inside you, how can you get past it to kill?”
He shook his head before Frank could speak. “And that’s stupid because it happens all the time. Drugs, alcohol, obsession, jealousy. But a part of me bought into it, wanted to buy into it.”
“You love her. He’s her father. There’s something else, Noah. They found Caryn.”
“What?” For a minute the name meant nothing. “Doesn’t matter now.”
“It might. She turned up in New York. Hooked up with a photographer she met at a party. A rich photographer.”
“Good for her. Hope she stays there. A whole continent between us ought to be enough.” Then he thought of Mike. “Did they pull her in?”
“She was questioned. Denied it. Word is she got pretty violent in denying it.”
“Typical.”
“She also has an alibi for the night Mike was hurt. The party. A couple of dozen people saw her at this deal up in the hills.”
“So she slipped out for a while.”
“It doesn’t look like it. The alibi’s holding. We have the time of the attack narrowed to thirty minutes between when Mike got to the house and Dory found him. During that half-hour period, Caryn was snuggled up to the photographer in front of twenty witnesses.”
“That doesn’t . . .” He trailed off, felt his insides lurch. “Tanner? God.” He dragged his hands free, pressed his fingers to his eyes. “He knew where I lived. He was out by then, and he knew where to find me. The son of a bitch, what was the point?”
“Did you let him see any of your work?”
“No, of course not.”
“Could be as simple as that. He wanted to see where you were heading with it. Top billing was important to him, probably still is. And you’d have names, addresses in your files. Notes, tapes.”
“Revenge? Does it come down to that? Getting back at the people who testified against him?”
“I don’t know. But he’s dying, Noah. What does he have to lose?”
He had nothing to lose. So he sat, sipping his drink and watching night fall. The pain was nicely tucked under the cushion of drugs, and the drugs were dancing with alcohol.
Just like old times.
It made him want to laugh. It made him want to weep.
Time was running out, he thought. Wasn’t it funny, wasn’t it wonderfully funny how it had crawled for twenty years, only to sprint like a runner at the starting block now that he was free?
Free to do what? To die of cancer?
Sam studied the gun, lifted it, stroked it. No, he didn’t think he’d let the cancer kill him. All he needed was the guts.
Experimentally he turned the gun, looked keenly into the barrel, then slipped it like a kiss between his lips.
It would be fast. And if there was pain, it would be over before it really began. His finger flirted with the trigger.
He could do it. It was just another kind of survival, wasn’t it? He’d learned all about survival in prison.
But not yet. First there was Livvy.
Most of all, there was Livvy.
Through the meal, no one spoke of it. Conversation ran smoothly, gliding over underlying tensions. After the first ten minutes, Noah gazed at his mother with admiration. She drew Olivia out, chattering on about the Center, asking her opinion about everything from the plight of the northern pocket gopher—where did she get this stuff—to the mating habits of osprey.
He decided either Olivia was as skilled an actress as her mother had been, or she was enjoying herself.
Val lifted a bowl of herbed potatoes and passed them to Frank. “Have some more.”
“I’m going to have to make serious use of your health club tomorrow.” But he accepted the bowl and helped himself to another serving. “This is a fantastic meal, Val.”
“Frank tolerates my cooking,” Celia put in.
“Cooking?” Frank winked at Noah and handed off the bowl. “When did you start cooking?”
“Listen to that,” she said as she gave him a playful punch. “All the years I’ve slaved over a hot stove for my men.”
“All the tofu that gave their lives,” Noah murmured, and earned a punch of his own. “But you sure are pretty, Mom. Isn’t she pretty?” He grabbed her hand and kissed it.
“You think that gets around me?”
He scooped up potatoes. “Yeah.”
And that’s what did it for Val. How could she hold back against a boy who so clearly loved his mother? She lifted a basket, offered it. “Have another roll, Noah.”
“Thanks.” This time when he smiled at her, she smiled back.
They lingered over coffee. Under different circumstances, Noah mused, the MacBrides and the Bradys would have slipped into an easy friendship, without complications, with no shadows.
But the shadows were flickering back. He could see them in the way Olivia would glance at the windows, quick glimpses at the dark. The way his father studied the house, a cop’s assessment of security.
And he saw the strain on Val MacBride’s face when his parents got ready to leave.
“I’ll be at your naturalist talk at the Center tomorrow.” Celia slipped on a light jacket on. “And I’m hoping there’s still room for one more on your guided hike.”
“We’ll make room.”
Celia ignored Olivia’s extended hand and caught her up in a hard hug. “I’ll see you in the morning, then. Val, Rob, thanks for a wonderful meal.” And when she embraced Val, she murmured in her ear. “Stay strong. We’re right here.”
She gave Val’s back a bolstering pat, then took Noah’s arm. “Walk your mother to the car.” It would, they both knew, give Frank a chance to reassure the MacBrides.
Celia breathed deep of the night and wondered how Frank would feel about buying a little holiday cabin in the area. They were used to having their chick close by, after all.
It was a good place for roots, she thought, drawing in the scent of growing things. A good place for her son.
She turned to him, took his face in her hands. “You’re smart and you’re clever and you’ve always been a joy to me. If you let that girl get away, I’ll kick your butt.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Do you know everything?”
“About you, I do. Have you asked her to marry you?”
“Sort of. She’s work. Yeah, just as you said she would be,” he added when Celia rolled her eyes. “But she’s not going to get away from me. And I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”
“I always wondered who you’d fall in love with and bring into our lives. And I always promised myself that whoever it was, no matter how irritated I might be by her, I’d be a quiet, noninterfering mother-in-law. And you can wipe that smirk off your face right now, young man.”
“Sorry. I thought I heard you say something about you being quiet.”
“I’ll ignore that, and tell you how much I appreciate you choosing a woman I can admire, respect and love.”
“I didn’t choose her. I think I ran out of choices the minute I saw her.”
“Oh.” Celia stepped back, sniffling. “That’s going to make me cry. I want grandbabies, Noah.”
“Is that from the quiet, noninterfering part of you?”
“Shut up.” Then she hugged him, held on fierce and tight. “Be careful. Please, be very careful.”
“I will. With her. With all of it.” He stared over his mother’s shoulder, into the shadows. “He’s not going to harm us.”
thirty-one
He waited until the house was quiet to go to he
r. He knocked softly but didn’t wait for her answer. And saw the moment she turned from the window that she hadn’t expected him.
“Did you really think I’d leave you alone tonight?”
“I don’t think it’s appropriate that we sleep together in my grandparents’ house.”
He had to give himself a minute. “Are you saying that to make me mad or because you actually believe the only reason I’m here is to sleep with you?”
She shrugged, then turned away again. The wind had risen to sing through the treetops. That, and the sound of the night birds, was a music that always soothed her.
But not tonight.
She’d tried a hot bath, the herbal tea her grandmother enjoyed before bedtime. They’d added yet another layer of fatigue to her body and did nothing to soothe her mind.
“I don’t have any objections to sex,” she said coolly, willing him to leave before she pulled him in any deeper. “But I’m tired, and my grandparents are sleeping at the end of the hallway.”
“Fine, go to bed.” He walked to her shelves, scanned the titles of books and plucked one at random. “I’ll just sit here and read awhile.”
She closed her eyes while her back was to him, then composing her features carefully, faced him. “Maybe we should straighten this out before it goes any further. The few days in the backcountry was fun. More fun than I’d expected. I like you, more than I anticipated. Because I do, I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Yes, you do.” He set the book aside, sat down. “The question is why.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Noah.” Some of the emotion pumping inside her leaked into her voice. “We had an interesting time together, we had great sex. Now I’ve got a lot more on my mind. And the simple fact is I don’t want what you seem to believe you want from us. I’m not built for it.”
“You’re in love with me, Olivia.”
“You’re deluding yourself.” She shoved open the French doors and stepped out onto the narrow terrace.
“The hell I am.”
